Times like this are nothing. Everything.

Mayuri clutches her face with rough hands, her skin soft beneath the callouses of his palms. It would take no effort for him to draw red lines of blood across her flesh, but he doesn't. Her breath is warm and tepid against his lips, and he breathes it in, as if sucking the very air from her lungs.

He stares at her with half-open eyes. The darkness floods her own, but they shine, they shine.

Retsu is the first to pull away, head down. Her mouth is swollen and rosy. Mayuri hates the beauty of her, the things she does to him, because he shouldn't feel anything at all. Her appearance should be irrelevant, her entire existence shouldn't matter to him.

But it does. It matters.

"I'm sorry," she says, voice soft like her perfume, "I don't know why I did that."

Mayuri looks away, the makeup on his face smeared and blotted from her handprints. He knows this mask of his infuriates her. He says nothing.

The warmth of her hand upon his cheek burns like acid. He wants to unwind her hair just to see it around her neck.

"You'll have to give it up someday," he hisses, "You can't fix everyone, Captain."

He knows she'll try anyway.